General Electric Co. v. Nitrogon Electric Co.

• Decision Date: 22 March 1923
• Citation: 292 F. 384
• Parties: GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. v. NITROGON ELECTRIC CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey

292 F. 384

GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. v. NITROGON ELECTRIC CO.

United States District Court, D. New Jersey.

March 22, 1923

Frederick P. Fish, of Boston, Mass., Hubert Howson, of New York City and Albert G. Davis and Alexander D. Lunt, both of Schenectady, N.Y., for plaintiff.

Duell Warfield & Duell, of New York City (F. P. Warfield and L. A Watson, both of New York City, of counsel), for defendant.

BODINE District Judge.

The present is an application for a preliminary injunction to restrain the defendant from infringing United States letters patent No. 1,180,159 issued to Irving Langmuir April 18 1916.

This patent was upheld in General Electric Co. v. Nitro-Tungsten Lamp Co. (October 27, 1919 (D.C.)) 261 F. 606 (opinion by Judge Mayer), affirmed June 2, 1920 (C.C.A.) 266 F. 994 (opinion by Judge Hough); General Electric Co. v. Continental Lamp Co. (C.C.A.) 280 F. 846, April 3, 1922 (opinion by Judge Manton); General Electric Co. v. Alexander et al. (October 29, 1921 (D.C.)) 277 F. 290 (opinion by Judge Mayer), affirmed April 10, 1922 (C.C. A.) 280 F. 852 (opinion by Judge Hough). The corresponding British patent was upheld by the House of Lords in British Thomson-Houston Co., Ltd., v. Corona Lamp Works, Limited, decided December 19, 1921, and a preliminary injunction was granted in this court in the suit of General Electric Co. v. Incandescent Products Corporation (D.C.) 280 F. 856.

The rule of law applicable to the present application, as stated by Judge Putman in Bresnahan v. Tripp, 72 F. 920, 19 C.C.A. 237, has never been better stated than by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Electric Manufacturing Co. v. Edison Electric Light Co., 61 F. 834, 10 C.C.A. 106, etc., as follows:

'It may be difficult to formulate a rule that will comprehend all the conditions which could be presented, but we think it safe to say that in general, where the validity of a patent has been sustained by prior adjudication upon final hearing, and after bona fide and strenuous contest, the matter of its validity upon motion for preliminary injunction is no longer at issue, all defense, except that of infringement, being reserved to the final hearing; subject, however, to the single exception that, where a new defense is interposed, the evidence to support it must be so cogent and persuasive as to impress the court with the conviction that, if it had been presented and considered in the former case, it would probably have availed to a contrary conclusion.'

One of the new defenses interposed in the present matter is that Langmuir was not the inventor of the device described in the patent, but that the same was discovered by one Colin G. Fink employed as a research chemist in the laboratory of the General Electric Company at Schenectady prior to Langmuir's employment there, as evidenced by Fink's experimental note book, photostatic copies of which are annexed to the affidavit filed in this suit.

It is interesting to note that Langmuir was not employed by the General Electric Company until nearly a year after Fink had ceased experimentation with respect to incandescent lamps containing colied carbon filaments placed in nitrogen gas under pressure. It is also interesting to note that it was some four or five...